Emil Hilb

Emil Hilb (born 26 April 1882 in Stuttgart; died 6 August 1929 in Würzburg) was a German-Jewish mathematician who worked in the fields of special functions, differential equations, and difference equations. He was one of the authors of the Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften (Encyclopedia of mathematical sciences), contributing on the topics of trigonometric series and differential equations. He wrote a book on Lamé functions.

Hilb obtained his PhD in 1903 under the supervision of Ferdinand von Lindemann. He worked as a high school mathematics teacher in Augsburg until 1906, when Max Noether hired him as an assistant; in 1908 he found a position as a lecturer at the University of Erlangen. He won a position as a professor at the University of Würzburg in 1909, in preference over Ernst Zermelo. His students at Würzburg included Richard Bär, who later became a distinguished experimental physicist, Otto Haupt, and Axel Schur.